Rupert Murdoch before the Leveson inquiry

Murdoch's media empire was partly built on rage at the British establishment. I, for one, hope he still has some fight in him

News Corp chief executive and chairman Rupert Murdoch (right), and his son James, appearing before a parliamentary committee hearing in London, in 2011; both will appear before the Leveson inqury this week. Photograph: Reuters Tv/REUTERS

On Wednesday, he is scheduled to appear for a lengthy examination before the Leveson inquiry in the UK on press behavior. There is nothing Rupert Murdoch is more temperamentally and philosophically at odds with than the idea of a government commission impaneled, in the name of propriety and decorum, to discipline the press.

Not only does Leveson represent, in his mind, the hypocrisy, self-interest and pusillanimity of the establishment; it is precisely, Rupert believes, his willingness to put the screws to such gutlessness on which he has built his fortune.

Of course, Leveson exists now because of Murdoch – or because of the success Rupert has had in running roughshod over the establishment. Its membership was so weak and desperate to suck up to him that he became the law. Now, in his weakness, they are back. The people and ideas Rupert had thought he'd vanquished are seeking to recover their power, at his expense.

This is, in its way, a titanic struggle.

It is hard to imagine a more Kangaroo-ish court than Leveson, convened to censure and castigate Murdoch (as well as other press outlets, but most of all Murdoch's) even before he or his operatives have been convicted of anything. Instead of the Murdoch newspapers' actions being a matter of law, Leveson has made the issue one of manners, and ritual, and unwritten codes of conduct. A fair trial in this context is impossible: we know the bad guys and we know the outcome – more press regulation.

Facilitating their mission is Murdoch himself, who disadvantageously appears before the committee as the proprietor of one of the most scandal-ridden news organizations in history. Leveson's inquiry wins by parading the old man out and sweating him.

It is worth pointing out, sooner rather than later, that they are both, Leveson and Murdoch, irrelevant. Leveson seeks to regulate news at the exact moment when technology has made this all the more difficult (not to mention, silly). Murdoch seeks to defend his papers at the exact moment when their fate has become obvious to everyone – but, perhaps, him. (Murdoch, arguably, was the internet of his day: using a new understanding of the information business to grab vast new power for himself.)

The curious thing about Leveson is that, during the months of testimony, it has revealed no practices that any sentient person has not known existed. It's been a cavalcade of the rude and nasty. And its point, it seems, is to say we are helpless in the face of such loucheness. Ultimately, its conclusion will be (in different words) that Britain is too small, powerless, inbred and thin-skinned to deal with an unregulated press. That Murdoch's press became, in its way, more powerful than the state itself.

Indeed, Leveson could have been impaneled a long time ago to deal with these same issues. It exists now only because Murdoch's power has lessened. If he still had his full might, Leveson would have been too cowardly to stand up to him.

It is, most likely, a terrible mismatch. Murdoch is 81. He can't hear. He frequently loses the point of a conversation. It isn't easy for him to follow long questions. And the hounds are baying for his blood.

Yet, in the grand scheme of things, he is Murdoch, and his interrogators are pipsqueaks. Were he to summon himself, were he to remember every craven Westminster favor and request, were he to free himself from the predictable cautions of his lawyers … well.

He should at least remind the committee that millions of the people it represents bought those papers, every day for a half century, which the committee now seeks to condemn. This, I'm sure, is a beat he won't miss.

And I hope he says that it is his prerogative and even his job to try to influence, frighten, malign and control politicians. It is the job of the political leadership to resist people like him. In those roles, Rupert succeeded and the political leadership failed. They accepted his rewards, and trembled at the prospect of his punishments.

This is what happens when the right of a free press is equivocal, nuanced and, fundamentally, based on a set of deals between the powerful, when it's a bargain, not a right – a constant jockeying for position. Leveson is just more jockeying.

Certainly, it would be a helluva day if Rupert could spell out the details of this unholy partnership and constant renegotiation. Has he kept a "little black book", a tally of a half-century of toadying, supplicating and favor-trading in Britain?

He is old, but he is mean. Many other subjects and issues have faded for him but the pieties of the political class – most of all when those pieties are directed against him – seem to make him youthfully combative again. Murdoch, when's he's on, can cut a phony like nobody else.

Obviously, Rupert's legal team will have strongly recommended that the best thing he can do before the committee is no harm. They will have advised a restrained and even apologetic approach. This will be sad. And this is surely what Leveson most hopes to accomplish: to show that there is nothing to fear from Rupert.

But Rupert is hard to control. He is, in the end, not a reliable corporate citizen. If he is tired, or jetlagged, if he's had a bit too much to drink the night before, if he's just plain angry, all bets are off. He could be loopy or, as well, ferocious. The lion.

Rupert is hardly the person one would have chosen to defend a free press. But he's who's up.